Abstract:
Universities consist of multi religious, multi - cultural and multi lingual student population,
where it is expected to have social harmony among those undergraduates. However there have
been recorded incidences and evidence to prove ethnic friction and linguistic Barriers in
sustaining harmonious atmosphere in university education. Therefore, it is understood that the
existing administrative mechanism has not improved social harmony among undergraduates of
multicultural and multi linguistic background. Eastern university is teaching social harmony in
English to have a common medium of instruction. Most of the Undergraduates who entered
the Eastern University come from rural area and poor family background and they learnt in
their mother language at the schools. Though majority of the university programmes are taught
in English, schools have their curriculum in Sinhala and Tamil. Therefore students enrolled in
to the university where their programme is in English will have trouble both in understanding
the subjects as well as in communicating with other. These students face some problems such
as transferring ideas, communication and interaction, mutual trust. Highlighting one
community culture might be perceived as threat to others. Even after teaching social harmony
at the university there are notable incidents challenges to normalcy between different students
communities. The research intends: a ) to learn how teaching social harmony contributes to
make stability in the cohesive relationship among the students in the university; b ) to learn
what are the programmes practised in the universities; C ) to learn what are the programme
undertaken in other universities; and d ) to identify the challenges to sustain the harmony
between different students communities. Undergraduate population of EUSL are of Sinhala
and Tamil in terms of language, where majority of the programme are conducted in English
except. For faculty of Arts and Culture. Social harmony programme no exception. However
informal communication is primarily done in their mother languages which might lead to
misunderstanding and therefore will widen the gap between different undergraduate
communities. Therefore more emphasis should be laid on social harmony programmes that will
bring multi ethnic students together. Cultural activities should be encouraged in addition to
teaching social harmony in class
